JUST WAITING TO BE DONE:

Momentum Grows On Health Care (JILL GARDINER, January 9, 2007, NY Sun)

[T]he president of the Greater New York Hospital Association, Kenneth Raske], a supporter of universal health care, said that while the Democrats who just won control of Congress may support universal health care, the issue is basically dead at the federal level without support from the president.

Others said the issue may sound good for politicians, but is not a wise move in terms of policy. "It sounds compassionate for politicians to say we need to have universal coverage, but they don't explain what universal coverage really means, what it will cost, and what is it going to do to the tax burden of individuals," the president and CEO Pacific Research Institute, Sally Pipes, said. "It's going to move us down a slippery slope to a single payer system, where the one payer is the government."

Universal health care -- the concept of providing all Americans with health coverage --is not being discussed in the same way now as it was in the 1990s. At that time there was a dual emphasis of revamping the entire system, while the focus now seems to be solely on expanding health insurance coverage. The plan Mr. Schwarzenegger unveiled yesterday would charge companies with 10 workers or more who don't buy insurance for their staff a 4% payroll tax. If passed it will also tax doctors 2% of their revenue and hospitals 4%.

Massachusetts had a similar model of mandates and a complex system to allow residents to buy into insurance plans if they don't have coverage provided by their employer. Some say those models are more politically amenable because they don't stick the government with the full bill and don't disrupt those who already have insurance.

But others say the new prototypes will not work and will only get the country closer to a single-payer system, while doing nothing to improve the broken health care system.

"I'm Canadian. I grew up in a system where there were long waiting lists for care, rationed care, and lack of equipment," Ms. Pipes said. "Americans just wouldn't tolerate that."

If George W. Bush, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama walk out into the Rose Garden with a plan for universal HSAs -- subsidized for the poor -- who's going to stop it?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 9, 2007 8:26 AM